The year 2020 will be remembered throughout history as the time when the majority of businesses had to rapidly change their processes. Within 2 years, almost 95% of businesses globally use cloud services, and cloud adoption is still growing.
With over 60% of corporate data stored in the cloud and the growth of cloud adoption set to continue, the benefits of the cloud are becoming increasingly clear. However, simply adopting cloud solutions isn’t enough. To fully maximise your investment in the cloud, it’s crucial to have a solid strategy in place to follow cloud best practices.
Understanding the cloud and its benefits
In simple terms, the cloud refers to the delivery of computing services over the internet. These services can include everything from storage and computing power to software applications and databases.
One of the biggest benefits of the cloud is scalability. With traditional on-premises solutions, businesses often have to make significant investments in hardware and software to support their operations. This can be a major barrier to growth, as increasing capacity can be expensive and time-consuming. In contrast, the cloud allows businesses to quickly and easily scale up or down as needed, without the need for significant upfront investments.
Another key benefit of the cloud is flexibility. With cloud solutions, employees can access applications and data from anywhere with an internet connection. This can be particularly valuable for businesses with remote or distributed teams, as it can help to improve collaboration and productivity.
Finally, the cloud can offer significant cost savings. Because businesses only pay for the resources they use, they can avoid the upfront costs associated with traditional on-premises solutions. In addition, businesses can often reduce their ongoing IT costs by outsourcing tasks like maintenance and upgrades to their cloud provider.
Best practices for maximising your cloud investment
To ensure that your business gets the most out of your cloud investment, there are several best practices you should follow. These include:
One of the most important decisions you’ll make when finding a cloud platform is choosing the right provider. When evaluating providers, consider factors like security, reliability, and scalability, as well as their pricing and service offerings.
To ensure that your data is secure in the cloud, it’s important to follow best practices for cloud security. This can include measures like strong authentication and access controls, encryption, and monitoring for suspicious activity.
To get the best performance from your cloud solutions, it’s important to optimise your usage. This can include monitoring resource utilisation, identifying and addressing bottlenecks, and ensuring that your applications are properly configured. Maintaining high utilisation consistently of deployed cloud resources will minimise resources consumed and positively impact your sustainability initiatives.
While the cloud can offer significant cost savings, it’s important to ensure that you’re not overspending. To optimise your costs, consider strategies like using reserved instances, leveraging autoscaling, and using cost monitoring and optimization tools. Automation can play a key role in optimising your cloud solutions. By automating tasks like scaling, provisioning, and monitoring, you can improve efficiency and reduce the risk of human error.
To effectively manage your cloud solutions, it’s important to have the right tools in place. Cloud monitoring and management tools can help you identify and address issues quickly and can provide valuable insights into your usage and performance.
Get ahead with cloud best practices
Cloud solutions offer a wide range of benefits for businesses, from scalability and increased productivity, to reduced costs. To take advantage of the benefits that the cloud has to offer so that you can improve your bottom line and offer your customers a wider range of services, talk to the cloud experts at Virtu. They can ensure you follow best practices for cloud adoption, optimization, and management, so your business stays ahead of the curve. So whether you’re just starting out or looking to take your cloud strategy to the next level, now is the time to get started and reap the rewards of the cloud.